Friday, August 14, 2009

Greedy Goblin Syndrome

Since Gevlon started his blog a while back, they WoW blogosphere has blown up with gold making blogs. Most of these have been moderately successful even if they rarely offered much in the way of gold making tips.

The advent of the blogs caused people to try different ways of making money with the auctionhouse. They also used very different tactics. I will be the first to admit that Gevlon is what made me see the great profit available in the glyph industry. Most of my prior money came from farming herbs and ore. Like me, many other people are trying their hand at markets (and especially the glyph market.)

The key with the market you are in is to find one thing out. Who are the real Goblins and who can be pushed out. There are always people coming and going in the glyph market. Wheter it is someone leveling their inscription or attempting to become a baby goblin, there will always be some kind of competition.

There are several steps you can take to try to get rid of this pesky competition.

1) Undercut the shit out of everything: Undercut like a madman. In a market full of Goblins, the one coming out ahead is usually the one who has to most time. All of your glyphs should be the lowest on the market. I set up QA2 to not post any of my glpyhs when they would be posted under 3 gold. This is material price plus maybe a gold depending on the day. Let them sell their glyphs for 59 silver. They will eventually stop making them because there is no profit. Undercut for whatever you like. I undercut a little. You can undercut a lot if you want. This will not deter the true goblins so beware.

2) Watch your competition: E-stalking is your friend here. Put all of your competition on your friends list. When you are on, see who is on. Make a note of these times. Some players may have specific times they post at every day. Wait for them to log off and post your auctions. My friends list is filled with my competition. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

3)Cancel and Repost: When you are undercut, you need to cancel the undercut auctions and repost them. This is where you make your money. If you are lowest on the AH for the majority of the time, you will be making the first money. If you have a superior repost strategy then you dont have to be on constantly. This goes back to watching your competition.

4) Restock Often: You will be selling tons of glyphs and you need to be restocking them when you can. I usually empty my mailbox of successful auctions and then switch toons to replenish glyphs. This also servers to let you know if your competition is spying on you as well. If you log off your bank and you see competition logging on immediately, they may be keeping an eye on you.

5) Look for new Opportunities: There are always going to be new opportunities in the glyph industry. Check the auctionhouse very carefully. Look for any glyphs that are not posted at all. Make them and profit. You can usually put these up for 20 plus gold. Many times you will go for days without competition here.

6) Buy, don't farm: Farming materials is a waste of time. You will spend entirely too much time doing it and your profit per hour will suffer. Let the farmers do the farming. Every day I check ink and herb prices. If they are satisfactory, I will buy most of them up. Today I bought 40 stacks of icethorn from under 14 gold a stack. I also buy up any ink of the sea that isnt going for a ridiculous sum. Not only are you resupplying yourself, but you are taking away profit from the competition. When they cant buy cheap, you win.

7) Be ready for war: If the above strategies have not scared off your competition, you probably have a fellow "goblin" to deal with. Be prepared to spend lot of gold for very little profit. Usually the goblin with the deepest pockets is going to win. Sometimes you can do a fake pullout as well. Leave the market for a day or two, he will mark his glyphs way up, and you can swoop in for the undercut.

Keep in mind the the market is like a yo-yo with multiple goblins playing. Each glyph will have highs and lows. Stick with it and you will be rolling in the dough. Im at 120k on my bank toon, and would be even higher had I not missed 3 days worth of auctions this week due to real life obligations and internet problems.

Market price for ink of the sea on my server is around 2g40s and market price for the majority of glyphs is 5-6g. This doesn't leave much room for profit, especially when the competition constantly posts for under 3g. I'll keep persisting but i don't know if there's much gold to be made from inscription on my server.

I'm having fun with this myself, atm. Prices dropped below 3g each for a while, until the primary offender took a break; now he's back and trying the frequent-undercut technique, and think i'll turn my hand to the undercut-to-the-ground routine in response.

I like your blog its good writing. Keep it up.I have to fully agree with everything he wortes about glyph selling. It still works out. There is undercutting alot. But for the time you are Nr1. you sell in hugh quantum.With the new Addon it is easier than ever. But still it is a lot of crafting of glyphs. It ususually more than one hour you have to invest per day. But for me this is more fun than grinding.